Braille
by CoryphaeusRex
Summary: He always knew where Silvertongue was, and he had a similar knack for knowing when Meggie was at school. DustfingerxMo, Oneshot, set sometime in the distant mists of Meggie's childhood. M for a reason.


**Author's Notes & Disclaimer: :** I don't own Inkheart, although I have entertained idle fantasies of kidnapping Dustfinger from time to time. Mo and Dustfinger are lonely in the absence of their wives, and have come to an arrangement. Rated M for sexual situations, the usual jazz. Reviews are love, people, never forget that.

**.**

It was the one thing that distracted Dustfinger from the thought of going home. It was something he brooded on at nights, thought about constantly. He'd see a little girl in the street and he'd think of little Rosanna, or there'd be a dark-haired woman vanishing from sight, the image of Roxanne in this strange world that he'd found himself in. Christmas was the worst time. All those little blue lights and he could almost believe he was back amongst the fairies, with the chill crystallizing in his bones, and he could just nip over to the fire elves and warm back up.

Sleeping in the gutter got tiresome after a while.

He always knew where Silvertongue was. It could have been a relic of the reading, or it could have been some thin thread of feeling connecting the two of them, but no matter where the man wandered, all over Europe, into every second-hand bookshop on the continent, Dustfinger could always find him.

He had a similar knack for knowing just when Meggie was at school.

The lock-picking, now that was a leftover skill from being a wandering vagabond, that had nothing to do with the way Silvertongue had read him out of the book. And didn't Silvertongue always pick places where a child could pick the locks and let itself in, rifle through their cases and let itself back out again. It was like a big shiny invitation.

He was idly leafing through Meggie's history textbook when Mo emerged from his temporary workroom.

"God, Dustfinger, don't do that to me!"

"You know," Dustfinger said, turning a page of the colourful print, "there's a man called the Black Prince in here, but he doesn't look anything like-"

Mo crossed the room and snatched the book from him. "She'll be missing this."

"Is she going to be back?" Dustfinger shifted a little on the sofa, as though Meggie were going to jump into the room at any minute.

"The school's ten miles away. I doubt it." Mo tossed the book back down onto the coffee table. "So how did you get in this time?"

"Those big windows that overlook the garden."

"So you've tracked mud into my house?"

"What do you take me for, Silvertongue? Some common burglar?" Dustfinger actually seemed genuinely affronted. He lifted a foot and pointed at the sole of his old, worn boots. "Even with these clodhoppers on, I can manage to cover my tracks."

Mo did not look convinced.

"Of course," Dustfinger said, flicking one shoe off, then another, "no shoes is even better for not leaving a trace."

"Do you want to use the bath? Perhaps the shower?" Mo sighed, looking with distaste at Dustfinger's grubby socks. There was a toe sticking out.

"I'll survive."

"Yes, but I might suffocate."

"Oh, come on, Silvertongue, it's only the clothes that smell. It's not _me_."

"It's both. Which is why you are having a bath."

.

The arrangement they had necessitated Silvertongue's consent, which was the only reason Dustfinger had ended up in the bath. Of course. The satisfaction of undressing in front of Mo and knowing that he had barred himself from any involvement had nothing to do with it. Nor did the long time spent soaking in the warmth, absorbing the heat down to the marrow of his bones before being able to step out into the steam of the bathroom.

"Are you going to lie there all afternoon?" Mo was sitting with his back against the bath, long legs stretched out along the tiled floor.

"I may do," Dustfinger smirked. "Would it bother you if I did?"

"You're going to leave a big scummy mark around my bath."

"But I'll come out clean, and that's the important thing."

Mo twisted his head around, to glance at the now bubble-less surface of the water. "The hell you will. That water looks like oil."

"Which only proves just how clean I'm going to be when I get out."

"Which better be soon. Meggie'll be home from school in two hours."

"In which case I shall say hello-"

"You can't."

"-and then I shall continue giving her dear daddy the best head he's _ever_ had."

Mo blushed, and Dustfinger saw it and laughed. He ran a water-wrinkled hand through Mo's hair, wetting it and causing it to stick up at an odd angle, and then with the sound of a whale emerging from the sea, he stood up in the bath, feeling the gritty layer at the bottom shift under his feet. He stepped out, and curled his toes on the small bath rug.

"This isn't a very good hotel. Do I get a towel or what?"

Mo rose too, and flashed a wicked look at Dustfinger. "You've kept me waiting for thirty-five minutes. No, you don't get a towel."

He pressed his body against Dustfinger's, necessitating a quick shuffle sideways to avoid the jutting sink, and pinned the naked man to the wall. Dustfinger could feel Mo's breath on his ear, hot and sweet and fast.

"And thirty seconds more would have killed you?"

"Probably."

A heartbeat later, Silvertongue's lips clamped down on Dustfinger's neck, and a surprisingly strong hand wound into his red-gold hair, holding him still.

They didn't kiss. They never had done, not after the first time, and that excruciatingly awkward ten seconds, which had only confirmed the unvoiced notion. Kisses were for wives and wedding days, not for something like this. It was a simple, elegant solution to both of their homesick hearts, and it had never been anything but beautiful, simplistic pragmatism. Kill two birds with one stone.

That didn't mean Silvertongue didn't utilise his aptly labelled mouth for other uses, of course.

The first of which was bruising Dustfinger's neck, drawing his blood to the surface and making his breath catch in his throat. That grip in his hair was making things uncomfortable, but it wasn't actual pain and in exchange for the coming bliss he could put up with much worse. Mo's hands ran over his wet skin, tickling at his sides and making their way to the front of his own wet clothes, fumbling at buttons and buckles, knuckles clumsily brushing against Dustfinger's stomach.

The fire-dancer would have helped, of course, honestly, but there was a pounding beat coming from inside his brain that just didn't want Silvertongue to let up. There was the steam in the bathroom, but it felt practically cool against his too-hot skin, and he wanted the heat of Mo to keep covering him, warming him until he could feel his veins afire.

"You owe me for the bath," Mo panted, against his neck.

"That I do," Dustfinger forced his voice to come out steadily as the other man pulled away, shirt held closed by the collar button and trousers somewhere around his thighs. Dustfinger sank to his knees on the wet floor, and swiftly tugged Mo's boxers down to meet his trousers.

Somewhere in the back of his brain, the part of Dustfinger that was, well, Dustfinger, thought of teasing Mo, dragging this out a little longer and making it just a bit sweeter by the wait. But that part only seemed to be Dustfinger when he was around other people. With Silvertongue, the man who had read him out of the book, and therefore the Messiah to the author's God, he had no such restraint. Everything was laid bare, all he had ever wanted to do he couldn't keep himself from doing. It was the reason he'd first suggested the arrangement to Silvertongue.

He took Mo in his mouth, all the way to the back, mentally shutting down his gag reflex and holding onto the man's hips with his slippery hands, trying to regain a semblance of control even though it was he who'd been first on his knees this time. Mo's hands clenched in his hair, and he heard the curse-words begin pouring down from above.

"_It's nothing personal," Mo had told him once, after he'd asked about it. "But calling down God doesn't quite seem right."_

He drew back, allowed himself a moment of respite to crack his jaw and clear his throat, and then set to his task again, licking with broad, sloppy strokes, an unrefined technique that nevertheless served him well. After all, Mo didn't seem to care what exactly he was doing down there, just as long as he was doing something that felt good.

"Shit," Mo grunted, after only a few minutes of amateurish work, and came in Dustfinger's mouth. The fire-dancer stood, turned, spat into the sink. That was part of the arrangement. Anything you had to do to make it different from the other times. Anything to make this about sex and not love.

He turned away from the evidence in the sink, and advanced, hand curling around Mo's erection, touching with soft fingertips the places he'd so lavishly attended with his tongue. Mo tried to fight him off, hands closing on Dustfinger's wrists, but even though it was pleasure so intense it almost _hurt_, it was still this side of the pain line.

"Just stop..." he gasped, trying to back away without losing something important in Dustfinger's grip.

"I'm making sure you owe me for next time," Dustfinger grinned, and with a flourish that had Mo leaning heavily against the wall, his weak knees failing to support him, he let go. Mo released his wrists, and saw the purpling half-moons where his nails had dug in.

"Sorry," he said, stroking a thumb over the marks. Dustfinger shook him off.

"I'll take payment now," he said, moving Mo's hand to his crotch.

"Oh, you will? How gracious of you," Mo stroked, once, then moved his hand up Dustfinger's stomach, past his navel, tracing the curve of his ribcage and up to circle one of his nipples, erect with the cold and the tension. He leaned closer, until that breath heated Dustfinger's neck again. "I don't have to do what you say, remember? I read you here."

Dustfinger bit his lip. Yes, so far it had been a disaster of epic proportions, but there was something about being _known_, intimately, accurately, that made him weak at the knees. Mo had learned which buttons to press to get a reaction, and these were they.

"I know everything about you," Mo murmured, hands roaming over Dustfinger's chest, leaving goosebumps in their wake. "My _tongue_," he licked a thin trail up Dustfinger's neck, for emphasis, "shaped the words and brought you to me."

He was rewarded with a shiver. Dustfinger grabbed futilely at Mo's shoulders, but he wasn't dealing with a slightly-built man here, and Mo remained frustratingly distant, apart from those _hands_, hotter than his own at the best of times, exploring every bit of his flesh until nothing remained a mystery.

"Every part of you," Mo whispered in his ear, as his hands made their burning trail back down to where Dustfinger had originally left them.

"Silvertongue," the word escaped Dustfinger involuntarily in a hiss of breath, and his grip tightened on Mo's shirt.

"You know what I can do with my tongue."

Dustfinger nearly collapsed at the thought. "Yes, yes. I do."

"Then," Mo said, so quietly Dustfinger could barely hear him, "be quiet, and let me read you again."

That was as romantic as it got, and that was the exception to the rule. That was the _special_ exception, the little thing that made these liaisons unique. It may have been lacking in conventional romance, but it more than made up for it by their unprecedented intimacy, that of reader and read.

Dustfinger fought for silence as Mo licked a teasing trail from his chest down his stomach. Pale and skinny, Dustfinger knew, from never having enough to eat and always having to keep moving on, but thoughts of vanity became mere white noise as he felt Mo's mouth around him, and Dustfinger felt he wholly understood the title of Silvertongue. How could Mo be anything else, with skills like that?

His shoulderblades squeaked on the tiled wall as he fought between keeping his balance and just forcing himself further into Mo's mouth. Balance won, but Mo really _did_ know his every wish, and obliged him by taking him in deeper, allowing him that moment of heat and wetness before pulling away again, pleasuring him with light, deft strokes of the tongue.

It had been too long since they'd done this, and Dustfinger had already held on enough. He groaned, behind gritted teeth, and came, hands desperately seeking purchase in Mo's hair, just to pull him closer and have more of that wonderful mouth. He could feel Mo's throat contract, briefly, swallowing, then the cold air met with his warm cock and he almost flinched, looking down at the half-dressed man kneeling before him.

They'd done this too many times for an awkward silence, but it still felt like one. Mo stood up, pulled his clothes to some semblance of tidiness, and turned the shower head on over the bath, rinsing off the line of scum that Dustfinger had indeed left behind.

Once his knees stopped feeling like jelly, Dustfinger peeled his shoulders away from the wall, and Mo handed him a towel without looking. He switched the shower head off, and hung it back up.

"I expect you'll want some new clothes?" he said, and Dustfinger nodded. "I've been keeping some ready for you."

Dustfinger followed him from the bathroom obediently, clutching the towel to him, redundantly, as his skin had long since dried. Mo pulled the curtains in the bedroom, and rummaged in the bottom of the wardrobe, coming out with a carrier bag filled with clothes.

"You look after these ones," he said, with a warning glance at Dustfinger.

"I always do."

.

Dustfinger was gone by the time Meggie came home from school, the muddy footprints which he swore he hadn't left were mopped up, the bath was clean once more, and his clothes were buried deep in the bins at the end of the garden. Mo's own clothes were in the wash, and he was sitting in the kitchen in clean ones, drinking a cup of coffee and humming to himself.

"What's put you in such a good mood?" Meggie asked, as she dumped her bag on the sofa and mimed hitting herself over the head with her history textbook.

"I read an interesting book today," Mo said, and smiled to himself.


End file.
